🎨 Metaproof Art

Hey friends, this is Sophia from 🎨 Metaproof Art, the weekly newsletter where we update you on how the metaverse and web3 are changing the art industry. 

Stay informed via our Twitter and Subscribe here to get your metaverse art news every Monday.

💌 A quick thanks to our friends…

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📲 By the numbers

Shiny new wallets without crypto? CoinDesk reports a few interesting numbers leading to the conclusion that Donald Trump’s NFT collection had a large number of buyers who appear new to digital collectibles. (Source)

• Some 9,300 of 12,900 users who minted Trump NFTs didn’t hold any cryptocurrency in their wallet for gas fees, the fee that users pay for a blockchain transaction

• In effect, 72% were likely buying NFTs for the first time

• There were 21,420 tokens held by holders with no gas

📫 News & trends

🖼️ It appears some of Donald Trump’s NFT art was lifted from Amazon

Some Twitter sleuthing has led to the discovery that Donald Trump’s NFT image of himself as a cowboy actually comes from an Amazon image that was slightly altered. Matthew Sheffield spotted uncanny similarities between Trump’s NFTs and readily identifiable sources online: 

• The former president’s Western-style self-portrait and an Amazon image of a man modeling a duster long coat by brand Scully

• His astronaut NFT image as a recolored image stolen from British artist Benedict Redgrove

• His fighter jet pilot NFT closely resembling a Shutterstock image

Sheffield also noted that an Adobe watermark appears visible in one of the Trump NFT images, noting that the “artist” might be “cloning away the watermarks on the sample images but missed a spot.”

🌊 Surface and Polygon explore the intersection of digital and physical spaces at Miami Art Week

Over four days, the immersive web3 art bungalow of design and art magazine Surface and Ethereum developer Polygon at the W South Beach for Miami Art Week has served as a launchpad for salon-style conversations around sustainability, fashion, and community. Designed by Miami–based artist MokiBaby, installations were showcased against a disco-fied lightwave aesthetic, including contributions from OffLimits, Spatial Labs, LNQ, Prism Collective, Recur, WORTHLESSSTUDIOS, and more. Experts and entrepreneurs also highlighted how NFC technology and the blockchain are making authentication, iterative ownership, as well as supply-chain transparency more visible than ever.

🔮 Can blockchain solve the ownership debacle over AI generated art?

AI-generated art has sparked a major recent debate over ownership and intellectual property after a smartphone app went viral creating AI-generated portraits. While the debate isn’t unlike those seen in the film and music industries, developers in the burgeoning tech space argue that blockchain technology can actually offer a middle ground for artists and AI-generated content. An expert, for instance, highlights how authenticated AI introduces an automation ad verification system available to the public, where anyone could verify ownership and lineage instead of relying on multiple third-party sources. Another believes that authenticated AI could serve as a tool allowing creators to bring order and fairness to the “Wild West” generative AI content and the bigger web3 space. 

⚖️ Judge says lawsuit over artist Ryder Ripps’s NFTs protesting Bored Ape Yacht Club must proceed

California judge John F. Walter has ruled that a lawsuit filed by Yuga Labs, parent company of Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs, against artist Ryder Ripps could still head to trial. Back in June, Yuga Labs filed a suit alleging that the artist’s RR/BAYC, a conceptual art NFT project, misused Bored Ape Yacht Club’s trademarks in a move to mislead buyers and devalue their brand. In Ripps’ NFT collection, there are links pointing to the same digital assets as the BAYC NFTs, with Yuga Labs claiming that such was purposefully done to lead potential customers into buying Ripps’ NFTs. The case will go to trial if Ripps doesn’t appeal the decision while a jury will decide on the case, including the boundaries of conceptual art and the function of NFTs.

🔥How we sold out an NFT collection in 20 minutes (during a bear market)

Top-tier tennis tour ATP Tour has launched its NFT collection and garnered stellar results: a 300-piece collection sold out in under 20 minutes, top trending project globally on OpenSea, and more $1.2M generated in trading volume in the first 24 hours. The project also received rave reviews from collectors to boot. How did the ATP Tour do it, especially in a bear market? Its communications chief Mark Epps lists three key reasons, namely working with the right partners, leaning into one’s constraints, and engaging with the community. It’s also worth remembering things don’t end at the drop - the work starts by engaging after the fact, i.e., celebrating the art and the collectors who purchased. 

❌ NFT marketplace OpenSea confirms ban on Cuban artists

Citing US-imposed sanctions on Cuba, NFT marketplace OpenSea has declared a ban on digital artists from all countries sanctioned by the United States. The ban follows a tweet from NFTcuba.ART, a project helping Cuban artists succeed in the NFT space, saying that OpenSea has disabled its profile on the marketplace. Asserting that the sanctions are being unfairly applied to Cuban artists living outside the country, NFTcuba.ART wrote: “Cubans on the island, but those who have other nationalities have to endure censorship in web3 company.” Per a report from AP, Cuban artists insist they haven’t been told explicitly why their accounts were taken down, with the fact that many of them are no longer residing on the island nation. 

🇨🇳 NFTs spark collaborations in art world

Many artists, galleries, auction houses, and collectors have made sure not to get left behind as the world bought and sold NFTs when COVID-19 struck, with the digital artworks sustaining their popularity in the global art scene. Blockchain technologies are considered a way for artists to control their own work and its distribution as well as reach a wider community of collectors worldwide. And the current slump across the cryptocurrency space hasn’t done anything to reduce the interest, with people developing “a more critical and thoughtful engagement” with NFTs. Artists, after all, think beyond the constraints of the physical world and seek to make the impossible possible - something NFTs are thought to do within their realm. 

🌏 2022’s most spectacular, cringeworthy, and sad NFT disasters

2022 might as well be a year of reckoning for web3’s true believers, with those betting big on NFTs generally losing a lot of money. According to one report, the volume of NFTs across marketplaces - including the big guys like OpenSea, Rarible, and CryptoPunks - dropped from nearly $6B in January to less than $1B in October. Rest of World takes a look at 10 of the most spectacular NFT-related plunges this year, going from Pakistan to Brazil and looking at whether the downfall is from the asset’s price plummeting, its usefulness hitting its limits, or its user base barely proving to be large enough. 

🏛️ Exploring the virtual and uncharted: NFT spaces and metaverse architecture of 2022

2022 has proven to be an experiment for the virtual architectural and spatial environment, with innovative, original designs for the intangible digital space blurring boundaries between the physical and virtual worlds. Check out this list for the “best and most unconventional” virtual architecture, spatial universes, as well as digital scenographies crafted in 2022 for the metaverse and as independent NFTs that attempt unabashed creativity and innovation. 

🧵 Explainer: AI image generators paint a mixed picture for the metaverse

The AI image generator might as well be 2022’s top scene stealer, with the technology behind AI-generated art stirring controversy. In the past 12 months, there’s been an explosion of AI art, writers, musical composers, as well as AI-based skin analysis, but it’s the AI image generator that garnered great attention with vivid digital illustrations - created by a computer and a simple word prompt - showing up everywhere on social media. Critics argue that it increases the risk of sophisticated identity theft and jeopardizes artist income, while proponents deem it the next step in enhancing the metaverse experience and enabling user and artist creativity in the process. 

🖌️ Enter the mesmerizing, AI-driven world of artist Refik Anadol

Turkish-born, LA-based media artist Refik Anadol is known for his masterly use of data sets and AI models that allows him to create dazzling “living paintings,” which are now on display in MoMA’s Gund Lobby. Using AI art, Anadol generates endlessly changing forms and sounds across a 24ft x 24ft media wall, based on 320,000 visual inputs. Tagged as Unsupervised, the installation isn’t his foray in digital art. In 2019, he used 100M photographs of New York City to form a 30-minute cinematic piece. For a 2020 exhibition at the Natonal Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, Australia, he used Google AI’s algorithms to process some 200M nature and landscape images to create the 3D visual piece Quantum Memories. The artist is fascinated by data sets and what they say about the world. 

🖼️ Co-presenting with Art Seasons, Coinllectibles will showcase a curated show of 4 most exciting emerging artists from Southeast Asia to 40,000-strong crowd at ART SG

Metaverse blockchain company Coinllectibles is showing a curated show of four emerging artists from Southeast Asia at the widely anticipated art fair ART SG in 2023, which features more than 150 leading international galleries from Southeast Asia, Asia Pacific, and the rest of the world. The company’s ART SG participation is thought to be a “good marriage of art and technology” presented before 40,000 fair visitors. ART SG visitors will be treated not just to the works of the emerging artists - namely Umibaizurah (Malaysia), David Chan (Singapore), Gatot Indrajati (Indonesia) and Komkrit Tepthian (Thailand) - but also to immersive art experiences. They will be able to purchase 15.6-inch 3D tablets, which will contain a 3D art DOT and a limited-edition signed print by the artist. These are thought to be one of the firsts in Singapore, giving the platform a strong foothold in the region’s art scene. 

💸 Finance buzz

• For-profit social impact NFT startup Metagood has raised $5M in its pre-seed round. It launched its flagship NFT collection OnChainMonkey to create tokenized value for community members as well as enable members to promote and fund social good projects through its DAO, which raised 2,000 ETH in a year. (Source)

• Music and art marketplace Nifter has started a $40M seed funding round in aims of expanding beyond music and supporting art, video, and memorabilia NFTs. (Source)

🗣️ Quote of the week

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All content on this newsletter is for informational purposes only and does not aim to serve as or replace expert investment advice.

If you are a startup building in the metaverse / web3 ecosystem and are raising capital, please reach out to Sfermion. Sfermion is an investment firm focused on accelerating the emergence of the metaverse.

Stay informed via our Twitter and Subscribe here to get your metaverse art news every Monday.